Keep off the Grass
The lengths I go to, dear reader, to keep you in pretty pictures are nothing short of extraordinary. See this picture? See the those tulips? Nearly cost me 400 pounds.
I suppose I asked for it. There I was, merrily snapping away in one of the city parks yesterday evening, when a thick-set man came and stood solidly behind me. He coughed.
‘You’re on the grass,’ he said.
‘Am I?’ I asked, looking up and then around me. ‘Oh dear, I’d better get off then.’
I’ll admit I feigned ignorance about not being allowed on the grass because in actual fact I was standing right next to a sign instructing one to remove one’s person from said lawn, and you would have to be blind not to see it. Not even pretending to be Afrikaans-speaking would have worked because a) my Afrikaans is dreadful and b) Keep off the Grass looks the same in almost every language that cares about these things, and Afrikaans, you have to admit, has in the past been pretty good at telling people where they can and cannot stand.
Nope, I’d just chosen to ignore the sign, which isn’t fair or proper considering council gardeners work awfully hard at patching up gardens after dozens of people like me have traipsed through them. So perhaps what came next was karmic justice.
I’d snapped and snapped, even lain on a tarmac path with my head just on the lawn to take a picture of some forget-me-nots, when another thick-set man alerted me to the approaching closing time.
As I folded up my tripod and packed away my camera, he looked at me for a bit, took a breath and said, ‘Do you have a permit for this?’
Oh, the power these men wield. Of course I didn’t have a permit. A permit to take pictures of flowers in a park through which all and sundry pass every minute of every working day?
‘No,’ I said, looking at my shoes, which was about the point to which my heart had sunk.
‘There’s a fine of 400 pounds for that, you know, taking pictures without a permit. It’s more with a tripod. And are you a professional?’
‘No,’ I half lied, suddenly awfully glad I don’t have ads on this blog and that I earn more money off writing than photographs.
‘Oh. It’s more if you’re a professional.’
Sighing, and swallowing a small, anxious lump that had rather inconveniently materialised in my throat, I explained that if he charged me 400 pounds for something that wasn’t pointed out on the entrance board, I probably wouldn’t be able to pay him because there just isn’t a spare 400 pounds floating around right now.
Suddenly he changed his tune.
‘Mmmm. See that building? That lot are always taking pictures in this garden. Books, you know. And our parks and grounds people might need some pictures.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Come back on Friday afternoon and ask for me. I can’t promise anything but come and put your ‘ead in.’
Later, when I huffed and puffed about nanny states and curious groundsmen to my fella, I found no sympathy. Instead, he laughed like a drain.
‘Seriously? Come back on Friday after he’s just let you off a big fine? That’s the best pick-up line I’ve ever heard.’
Thank God for Spring Sunshine and Magnolias
Walking along Half Moon Lane in Herne Hill this afternoon to see an Open Garden (beautiful; full of hellebores, forget-me-nots, wallflowers and daffodils), I recognised the sense of relief and well-being I felt last year, when I took these photos of some magnolias in Kew Gardens. See? So pleased was I to be in some sunshine after what I thought was a long, dreary winter that I pointed my camera directly at the sun to make sure it was real.
The date on these pics is March 15, which marks this spring out to be nearly a month later than last year, although, to be fair, some magnolias have already been out for a week or two. Having grown up with almost perpetual warmth and sunshine, this winter has felt like an eternity.
But before I get het up on dates and figures and what we think plants and sunshine ought to be doing at certain times of year, read this lovely piece from A Single Swallow, by Horatio Clare:
Like birds, we take our cues from seasons, from the phases of the moon and the movements of the sun. But we have formalised our calculations into a rigid but invisible web of grids, of time and space, which theoretically tell us when and where we are. The problem is that though there are many repeating mathematical patterns in nature and cosmology, the rhythms of the earth fluctuate outside the calculations we have designed to contain it…We talk of early springs and late summers as though the seasons were somehow out of joint, while it would perhaps be more logical to consider that it is our neat calendar of hours, days and weeks, with their chain of ‘seasonal’ festivals that is inaccurate.
(I’ve just spent about twenty minutes trying to find that piece which I read last night at about 1am, noted and then neglected to mark on the page. It’s on page 280, if you’re interested.)
He has a point, hasn’t he? Clare refers chiefly to swallows and their migration, which he follows through Africa from Cape Town to rural Wales, but I think it has bearing on plants, too.
Still, it doesn’t diminish my pleasure at having just cause to walk bare legged, wear sunglasses and drink ginger beer in the middle of the afternoon once more.
PS Being close to the flight path to Heathrow, I’m so enjoying the peace and quiet of not having the drone of aeroplane engines overhead at all times of day and night. That said, besides those travellers who really do have places to be, I can’t help feeling for fruit, cut-flower and vegetable farmers whose livelihoods are held ransom by a volcano on the other side of the world – and by what some would say is an untenable economic system, the vulnerability of which is now laid bare. The Guardian has an interesting piece on the subject here
She’s Here!
What I loved about this spring day (yes, she’s here, spring is finally here):
Putting bed linen out on the line to dry for the first time since, er, October, and leaving the sun and wind do their work.
Making lemon cupcakes with two twelve-year-olds and realising that it doesn’t matter if the icing isn’t perfectly smooth, or that the sponge didn’t rise as much as it ought to have done. Together, butter, sugar and flour will taste good no matter what you do to them.
This year’s first tulips.
At the end of the day, a man leaning out of a top floor window and having a fag.
Hearing a delivery man wish a customer well with her pregnancy.
The deep-plum leaves of a prunus against a sage-green wall.
To the west, the sun setting over a hundred chimney tops, which made me think of this:
Self-raising Flowers
Years ago I had a temporary administration job in a university department in central London. The job served its purpose, had its ups and downs and involved a fair bit of filing, a task that allowed one to disappear to a small, windowless room for days on end, certain in the knowledge that one would be left undisturbed for the duration.
I didn’t care much for the filing, the subject codes or whether the students had passed or failed. What distracted me in that tiny room was the personal data contained in those files: places and dates of birth, copies of visa and asylum applications, names of children and spouses – and the names of the students themselves. As the course attracted a large West African contingent, the students’ names were not the mild Sarahs, Janes and Katies I’d been exposed to until then but marvellous things like Promise, Charity, Hyacinth and, my favourite, Dahlia.
That particular name, Dahlia, popped into my head early one morning last week as I photographed a garden given over almost in entirety to the flowers. It’s a life’s work for the owner, who, after 39 years in the same beloved place, is moving on to somewhere smaller in the next month or so.
“That garden’s a bloody mess,” a local landscape designer said when I mentioned it. “My hands itch when I go there.”
She’s right – it is a terrible, overgrown mess but therein lies its most wonderful charm. In that quiet garden I was entranced by the infinite variations of colour and form in this most regal of summer flowers. So, they’re greedy feeders and they’re a bit rampant if left unchecked, but if you’re going to name your child after a flower, I can think of few better options than Dahlia.
I’m to go back to the garden for a reshoot but, Sod’s law, the weather’s turned and it’s raining.
The Ultimate Seed Collection
If you’ve visited www.ted.com before , you’ll know it’s a fascinating repository of talks by some of the world’s leading thinkers.
Today I discovered a talk by Jonathan Drori about the Millenium Seed Bank. When you have a moment take a listen and learn why three billion seeds from around the world have been gathered for safekeeping. Then click on the next talk and the next and the next and the next and before you know it, it will be time for supper.
You can find out more on the MSB, which is attached to Kew, here.
A Dying Breed
My first introduction to ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ was through Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of World. It was the wonderful roll of the name that struck me, aged seven or eight, for it seemed nothing like the anonymous cooking apples that grew in the garden (pictured) or the usual South African supermarket fare, which offered a choice of ‘Granny Smith’, ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘red ones’.
I’m sure, however, that ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ is to be found in Britain’s National Fruit Collections on Brogdale Farm, Kent. Over 2 000 varieties of apple are grown there, yet Kent’s orchards have been reduced by over 85 per cent in the past 50 years, as Lara Barton explains in this poignant video clip in today’s Guardian online.
How many varieties of apple does one find in British supermarkets today? The variety is greater than that of my southern childhood, but I can think of only five or six, at most.
I expect the fall in number is a matter of commercial expedience combined with consumer demand, yet there is something to be said for a good apple with crunch and taste. It’s one of life’s finer things.
Last weekend I made a fruit tart – I say fruit, rather than apple, since I’d insufficient ‘Bramley’ apples and so topped up the filling with pears. The scent of a buttery case crisping in the oven and of the fruit collapsing in a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and honey while the kitchen windows steamed up against the cold outside was delightful. With all the ghouls and beasties on loose, it was a reassuring way to pass Halloween.
Kew Sights
To Kew a few days ago. It was falling leaves, squirrels manically preparing for hibernation, a woodpecker or two, chestnuts on the ground, long shadows – and these Rudbeckia, some of the last flowers to leave the summer party. They remind me a little of young celebs exiting West End clubs at three in the morning, the pictures of which one sees in the free-sheets, only the flowers wear their smudged mascara and crumpled dresses rather more elegantly.
And this detail on the outside of the Temperate House:
The angle is peculiar because, being shorter rather than taller, I was looking up at it. A step ladder might have been useful but who wants to lug a step ladder around Kew when there are important things like lemon drizzle cake to be had in the tea room.
Sky High
When I lived in Durban, South Africa, I was always intrigued by the speed at which plants would take root on buildings. Once I pulled from a roof gutter a fair-sized schefflera that was growing in the leaf litter there; elsewhere figs stealthily wrapped their roots around drains, pipes and brickwork in a process that was at once about decay and renewal.
On the other side of the world in New York, the same thing happened on a railway line last used in the 1980s. Called the High Line, the track was built to transport wholesale goods through Manhattan. It’s distinguishing feature was that it was above ground, elevated so carriages, cars and pedestrians could pass freely beneath it. When trucks superceded trains as the favoured mode of transport and the last cargo – Christmas turkeys – was delivered, the line was all but forgotten.
That is, until some locals began to mutter about it being an eyesore. In the intervening years, 25 in all, wind and small animals such as birds, bats and rodents brought seeds to the abandoned space. Leaves fell. Dust blew in. Water collected. In time plants took root in nooks and crevices between the tracks; they died, decomposed and formed humus which begets soil. More plants grew and in this no-man’s land of concrete and steel a green lung began to flourish on its accord. Some graffiti artists moved in. I expect it provided great habitat for urban wildlife but you can see why the locals didn’t like it.
The area was all set to be pulled down when it was rescued by a group called Friends of the High Line and was redesigned and replanted with species inspired by the self-seeded varieties that had grown there originally.
Piet Oudolf – one of my favourite garden designers and one known for informal, textural planting – was behind part of it. I expect it’s too early for an October Bloom List to have been put up but the September Bloom List , which you can find on the Friends site, is extensive and includes everything from echinacea to something called rattlesnake master to sweet black-eyed Susan.
On Saturday BBC News called the High Line ‘a masterclass in urban renewal, a kind of “strip-prairie” through the heart of the urban jungle’. Parts of it are still under construction but when it’s complete it will be a mile and a half long, running through the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen.
Access points will include stairs and lifts – expect you’d need to call them elevators out there – and the plans include plenty of places to sit and watch the world go by. It sounds fabulous and I can’t wait to see it myself one day, although when I do I’ll be sure not to pluck anything out of any gutter.
Pics copyright Clare Hambly.
Pavilion? What Pavilion?
I know I told you the other day that I’d visit the intriguing pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park before it comes down and on Tuesday I set out to do just that but, as my former Sunday School teachers would say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In this instance I became completely and utterly distracted by the rose garden close to Hyde Park Corner, which I have barely looked at all summer long. What’s more, the light was perfect and as I wandered from flower bed to flower bed with my camera, thoughts of the pavilion fell away.
First there were the roses. I’m a terrible sucker for blousy ones like this – they’re right up there with Green and Black’s, a glass of dry white and a weepy rom-com. Ok, maybe not the rom-com but Colin Firth swimming in the lake at Pemberley, certainly.
Then there were Japanese anemones (A. hupehensis), which are on their way out now – yes, we’re that far into autumn. The flowers on these were pink but I far prefer the white and so have removed the colour from the pictures in order to have my way.
I am particularly fond of the shapes their stems and spent flower heads form. Aren’t they gorgeous? Quite unexpected, too. There’s a metaphor for life somewhere in that, I expect. They are sometimes called windflowers, a name deriving from the Greek anemone – meaning wind, not flower, obviously. The name is quite fitting.
On, then, to a regular daisy; there’s a tattiness in this one that’s rather appealing.
And a picture of one of the flower beds thrown in for good measure.
Now all that remains is to find that pavilion.
Gossamer
Along with the other anonymous night workers that keep the world ticking over – street sweepers, factory workers, nurses, night bus drivers, office cleaners, bakers, fishermen – a spider was hard at it while the rest of us slept last night.
Am always intrigued by spider webs; the regularity is fascinating but so, too, are the anomalies, which you can see here and there in this one. Makes you feel like saying, ‘Oops, dropped a stitch’.
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